


She Never Wanted to Leave

by dreaminghour



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, alternative ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26670043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreaminghour/pseuds/dreaminghour
Summary: A twist at the very end changes who dies.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 29
Kudos: 27





	She Never Wanted to Leave

Snow was falling as Daenerys looked up, gathering to melt in the eddying blood that ran over her hands — her hands that were so hot, they steamed. She thought she must be burning.

“Ghhhuk—” Jon coughed and Daenerys fell to her knees as he slipped from her arms.

“Jon, I—” her voice broke, and all she said came out as an unfamiliar whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

Deep down Daenerys knew it was meaningless, these words she’d said to no man. But some part of her understood it was breath that could not be stopped, when the larger part of her had lost all control. The words were the most natural reaction, a return to a girl she believed she had quashed.

She shivered, his heat and the chill air intermingling, dizzying her, as Jon choked on his own blood, and her hands were dyed red.

“I’m so sorry, my love.”

“Nnugh—”

“Shh, it’s all right.”

“Nuh, ahm ssuugh—”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

He was breathing heavily, his mouth bloody. She leaned closer, and touched his face to hers. Jon tried to raise his own hand, but he was slipping further from her. She'd turned the blade away from her body, back toward him. Her thrust had been deep and struck true. He didn’t have much longer. Daenerys's eyes stung. She wrapped her arms around him, felt his heart jump in his throat, and clung closer to him still.

“I would have done the same thing,” she said in his ear, and tried to smile. She kissed him, his lips twitched, and when she pulled back, he had left her.

She held him until she felt a familiar warmth at her back. Drogon had crawled into the throne room to shield her from the coming night. When she turned to her dragon, he pulled back his lips.

“I’m all right, Drogon,” she said. She let out one long sigh, and felt lighter than she had in years.

She laid Jon down, kneeling beside him in blood that was frozen, breathing in the ashes of those unto whom she had brought deliverance, and beyond the bulk of her dragon she saw that the darkness was coming back, more quickly than before. This would be a hard winter.

“I wish—” she got up, a bit shaky, knees cold, and turned to the throne. “I wish we could have ruled together, Jon. It was never to be a comfortable throne, but it would have been bearable with another by my side.” She sighed again. “I dreamed of my father last night—”

Drogon rumbled, bumping her with one side of his face.

“They’re only ghosts, Drogon. They can’t hurt us.”

Daenerys walked along her dragon’s side, to where his tail curled around the throne, and she grasped the hilt once more.

“I dreamed that he wasn’t mad. What a life that might have been. Imagine that I met you here, Jon, after you’d grown up in the stormlands. A man of northern ice, cooling to my tempest.”

She laughed and turned as though to speak to a dead man, still grasping the throne.

“We could have been married like any other Targaryeans, we might have lived to an old age, we might have defeated the Night King a long time—” She interrupted herself, abruptly letting go of the melted sword. “Of course there are other dragons!”

She walked back to Drogon, trying to sooth him with her words.

“You mustn’t— you mustn’t stop believing.” She was crying anew, but now side-stepped the man she’d killed who lay near Drogon’s claws. She stroked the dragon behind his eye, and he grumbled in his purring way.

“I want to go find them, too,” she murmured in reply, “of course, I do.”

She looked up to where the great hall’s tall windows had once cast summer sunlight on the swords a dragon had crafted into a throne.

“I can feel him.” Her voice sounded hollow in the ash and snow, consumed by the death that still hungered. “Can’t you? Balerion. His bones are here. And my father, his ashes—” she jerked back, “I can feel their ashes in my blood. Can’t you? They're still here.” She stumbled over Jon’s body. “Oh!”

Drogon withdrew a little as her red fingers trembled unable to touch this man.

“I know. We should bury him. We will. But—” Her breath quavered, “What did you say? About the others.”

Drogon rattled his scales, and roared up to the molten sky. All around her flakes of ash and glinting chrystals swirled. Despite the rising darkness, she could make out figures coming toward her, but no one spoke, she could hear no one but Drogon. He lit a fire in the grates, but she could not stop shivering. She heard something like music — twinkling, grinding, whispering — she felt the pull of the currents in the air, the beat of Jon’s heart at her cheek, the drum of war. So she began to dance. Her feet grew warm. She knew then she never wanted to leave. She suspected they would try and make her. As they always had. As they always would.

She was the dragon. She would light them all on fire, and never burn.

Let them come. Let them try and discover ruination.

**Author's Note:**

> For something completely different, check out [A Drunken Guessing Game](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686918) starring Podrick & Tyrion.


End file.
